Baggas' Blog

Greetings from sunny tropical Queensland, where aside from missing my wife and kids I am suffering from serious guitar withdrawals. I can’t find any station on my TV where I am staying except ‘Max’ and have had the radio in my hire car alternating between my iPod, some new CDs I got, and the local country FM station (Kix – the Best Country in the World!) – why doesn’t Perth have a country music station?? seriously one of the worst things about Perth… anyway I digress… so yeh, I’m listening to lots of interesting music but have no guitar to play – very frustrating!

I seriously think that the airlines should allow guitarists to take one guitar in addition to their usual baggage allowance.. would make for a much happier, more melodic travel experience. How bout it, QANTAS?

When I got my first Fender from Nashville I flew with it half way back around the world to Perth, but at that point I was able to just count it as one of the kid’s pieces of baggage. Sadly I have no kid with me this time so no baggage allowance to co-opt. I shall have to think of some cunning plan to bring a guitar for my next 2 week trip here…

I did visit one of the local ACC churches here on Sunday : here’s my ‘mystery worshipper’ review. Smallish church but the music was good. Lots of energy courtesy of the excellent young guy who was worship leading and the youth who were moshing in the first couple of rows. The band was simple – they didn’t play any super complicated licks (except the bass solo in Salvation is here), but they were really tight and it was a nice mix (my only complaint would have been I couldn’t hear the girl plying lead guitar). Overall I took out of it that you can have a really quality sound without doing anything too complicated if you have a tight band who knows the songs, a good mix, and a dynamic worship leader who can really take the music in the right direction. I liked that they also (in a couple of songs) left space for people to worship freely, although even that was fairly brief and the worship leader had his finger on the pulse and the band followed him diligently. So nice to have a great worship experience away from home. I think it is valuable for us as worship leaders and musicians to visit other churches from time to time and get a feel for what others are doing.

Anyway I should turn out the lights… getting late here in Qld and I have another day of biostatistics awaiting me tomorrow (actually make it today now… zero hours). Just one last plug if you want to listen to some classic music – I just watched the movie ‘The Boat that Rocked’ – not bad for a laugh.. think Austin Powers meets Titanic and you’ll be on the right track. I can’t say I can recommend it as a good wholesome Christian movie (don’t say I didn’t warn you) but if you want a fun movie with some awesome old 60’s music… check it out.

And on that note I’m signing off. Keep on rockin’

Tonight I find myself in Townsville, in the north of Queensland. Never been here before, in fact this is the furthest North I have been in Australia thus far (I’ll break my south record next month when we go to Tasmania). I’m here for a three day course in Travel Medicine, starting tomorrow, as part of my Masters degree.

My midnight flight from Perth to Brisbane was delayed by an hour last night but thankfully I slept pretty much the whole flight, even though I didn’t get the window seat I requested as I volunteered to move so a couple could sit together. In spite of this I think I was asleep before we took off and woke just before descent. Then it was a short flight from Brisbane up here to Townsville.

I had a short nap after checking in to my hotel and then took a drive around. Certainly is a scenic place – I took a walk along a beautiful beach called the Strand with views across to the mountainous Magnetic Island. Then I took a drive up Castle Hill – a steep rocky mountain which dominates the landscape, towering above the city. I drove past many people walking up and felt a bit lazy but I was tired from flying and have a bit of a cold so I don’t think I would have handled the climb very well. Driving or walking, it’s well worth the effort – the 360 degree views are spectacular! I’ve got a few photos but for some reason flickr is not letting me upload any (something to do with the hotel’s net connection) but here’s a Mobile Me Gallery of today’s photos. Driving down the hill I mostly coasted in neutral and let gravity do the work – not sure if that’s a bad way to drive or not?

Anyway, after a steak dinner and a brief dip in the spa here it’s time for an early night to catch up on some more sleep. First day of Uni classes for me tomorrow since 1999 so it will be interesting to see how it goes.

This weekend we wanted to get away for a couple of days for our tenth anniversary. Since neither of us had been here before, we decided to visit Adelaide. 

I doubt Adelaide would be a place I’d plan on visiting regularly, but it’s been nice seeing somewhere new.

A few observations :

• Adelaide airport is nice – better roomier, cleaner, easier, and better resourced than Perth
• Adelaide city, although smaller, has more going on after dark than Perth – plenty of places open, people everywhere, music pumping
• Rundle mall – good place to shop. Just seems to go on forever.
• Seem to be a lot more street people and mentally ill people here – maybe they are just more visible
• hard to understand the pedestrian crossing rules here – cars trying to turn while people are crossing the road – a little scary
• does this city have freeways? I’m yet to see one.
• the city of churches label does seem apt – only other place I’ve been to with a similar concentration of churches was Nashville (great city, lovely feel, nice people, awesome music!) Uniting church seems big around here.

Today we took a drive around the Barossa Valley and enjoyed a scenic trip back via the Torrens river valley and Adelaide Hills. Plenty of nice vineyards (didn’t stop at many though, although had a beautiful lunch at one), more Lutheran churches than I have ever seen in my life. In terms of natural beauty and general tourist appeal though, the Barossa isn’t a patch on Margaret River.

Mia has been wonderful this trip. Slept well in plane, car, hotel and when out & about. No major problems. Six months old and already a great little traveller.

Well my schedule is officially looking pretty insane the next two months. I had to break the news to Chas, our church music director, last night, that I will be away a fair bit between now and Christmas. Between travel, and hospital on-call weekends and study I’ll be limited in the amount of Sundays I can play, although I’ll still try and pitch in as much as I can (especially since I’ve only just got my new Telecaster guitar, and need to “run it in” a bit more..)

Earlier this year I was feeling a bit of a case of travel withdrawals. After travelling to Africa (3 times) and around the world to the UK and USA in the last two years the prospect of a year with no trips away was not something I relished. I well and truly have caught the travel bug. I even like hanging around airports, hotels etc (Jen would say I’m a bit mental.) Having said that, with Mia being born this year, a break from travel has been the right thing to do.

But in the next 2 months we’ll be making up for lost time. Starting next week – Jen and I (and Mia) are flying to Adelaide for the weekend to celebrate our 10th anniversary. Then two weeks after that I’ll be off to tropical Townsville for 4 days for a course in Travel Medicine as part of my Masters degree. And in November we’ve booked in a family holiday to Tasmania for a week – a place we’ve recently been inspired to visit for the first time. In amidst all that I have uni exams (first is on Monday) and assignments, and hospital cover, and birthday parties, and a home group weekend down south, and much more. So it’s going to be a bit of a roller coaster ride for our family, but hopefully all good. I’ll keep you posted.

United Airlines offers in-flight iPhone and iPod Connectivity | The Apple Blog

Over the last couple of years I’ve spent many hours on planes, huddled over my iPod watching shows and movies on the little screen. In fact I watched the first three seasons on Battlestar Galactica (awesome show) in this manner. And almost invariably if you look around the cabin on any flight you will see several people with those characteristic white earphones in their ears. So the above story definitely appeals to me and I’m sure many other travellers. In a nod to the increasing ubiquity of these devices, United Airlines have installed iPod connectors in some of their planes so you can browse your iPod or iPhone and watch or listen to your own content on their screens, as well as keep your device charged. Certainly beats huddling over a tiny screen and definitely good to have more choice beyond the usual in-flight entertainment. Hope this comes to Australia soon…

In other iPod news, I noticed today that you can now purchase some TV shows via the Australian iTunes store. Only a couple of years behind the rest of the world! Hopefully movie rentals will follow. My guess is they’ve finally got their act together and done this because of the upcoming Australian iPhone launch.

Miss Mia’s first travel booking

Originally uploaded by baggas

For some reason I thought this was cute, seeing Miss Mia’s name in print like this

Jennifer and I are going to Adelaide in September for our anniversary for a few days, and Mia will be coming along for the ride.

Jetlag is all in the stomach – www.6minutes.com.au

This story just popped into my inbox, which suggests that it may be easier to reset your body clock when food is scarce. In other words, fasting before a long flight might help reduce the amount of jet lag you feel. This data is derived from animal experiments and has not yet been validated on humans but it’s worth thinking about.

If nothing else it just gives one more excuse to avoid eating dodgy airline food…

Ever become aware of a stupid habit you have when someone mentions it in themselves? This happened to me this morning in church where Mark mentioned the habit he has of packing far too many books whenever he goes travelling, even if it’s just for the weekend. I too am seriously guilty of this – I pack 4 or 5 books in my suitcase if I’m going away, only to get maybe one or two of them read.

But what’s worse, no matter where I am, I’m always drawn to look in bookshops and wind up bringing back several more books in addition to the ones I took with me. The last 3 times I visited Uganda I brought back at least 4 or 5 books each time (with the justification that ‘you just can’t buy these books back home’) – one of which was a massive 3kg textbook that I ended up having to pack in my luggage the other 3/4 of the way around the world through another 3 countries! Crazy. I can see one attraction of Cambodia (where ob1 was) perhaps being that there is less likely to be a big English language press there and hence less books to tempt me.

The other stupid thing I do is that I am too ambitious in my choice of reading material for travelling. Rather than picking something quick and light, I have a tendency towards choosing books of serious literary or theological cred, only to find that airplanes, airports and even hotels (especially when the kids are around) are not the best settings to try and tackle these sort of tomes.

So, my take home lessons for travelling readers (or reading travellers) are :

1. Choose fairly easy to read, (relatively) lightweight books.
2. Only take 1 or 2 books maximum. If you run out, you can always buy more along the way.
3. If you’re like me, factor in the fact that you almost certainly will acquire more books in your travels, and accordingly allow room in your luggage for that eventuality.
4. Guidebooks can be useful but I’ve found photocopying the relevant sections to be worthwhile. If you know you are only going to be in a couple of cities in a country, then copy those pages and leave the other 90% of the book at home. That way when you move on from that country you can simply leave your photocopied pages in the rubbish.
5. Taking novels set in the country you are visiting is a good way to prepare yourself for your visit, and might also lead you to reading some books you might otherwise have not considered (for example I’ve read a few excellent novels set in Uganda that I probably would never have read otherwise)
6. Consider books in digital format…. I haven’t done this travelling but a few years back I went through a phase of reading PDF books on my Palm Pilot whilst doing long quiet ICU shifts. I read the entire Dune and Wheel of Time series in that way.  Great for saving luggage space but for me this idea has one huge drawback – it violates my whole “books as furniture” principle – just like I prefer a physical copy of my music rather than a purely digital one, I like having books to hold and put on a shelf. There’s just something about holding a book in your hands and turning those pages that a digital reader can’t replicate. This is perhaps why, although I have 19 different bible versions on my PDA phone, I still do virtually all of my Bible reading in physical Bibles (preferably leather ones that sit nicely on my lap but I’m getting way off topic now…)

Anyway if anyone have any other tips they want to add to the list I’d love to hear them. All this talk, and following ob1’s blog of his travels over the last week has got me a bit “travel sick” (I doubt that’s the correct term but I’m using it in the sense of the opposite of “homesickness” wherein I’m actually seriously missing being in airports and on planes and in strange countries – Jen would say I’m crazy). I’ve got no plans to go back to Uganda this year, since we have a newborn baby and wouldn’t want to leave Jen and 3 kids for 3 weeks or so – plus I haven’t heard at all from them if they are actually doing a Watoto medical team this year.. but if another opportunity was to present itself for I’d be seriously tempted to jump at it…

US deal ‘to trigger airfare price war’ | Herald Sun

This can only be good news. Apparently the US and Australian governments have finalised an “open skies” agreement which removes limits on the amount of flights and airlines on the trans-Pacific route between Australia and the USA. And hopefully increased competition and availability will drive down prices of flights in both directions. It probably won’t be for a little while (due to the impending birth of our new daughter) but I absolutely loved visiting America last year and am super keen to get back over there again. So I was very pleased when I saw this piece of news

Here’s the second part of the video from our weekend in Denmark. It really is a beautiful spot down there – lovely countryside and some great coastal scenery.

It’s another long weekend here down under, this time for Australia Day, January 26th. We’ll be having the customary lamb dinner tonight with some chops before yet another public holiday on-call for me tomorrow.

So far this weekend’s been good though. Jen and I went out for dinner and a movie on Friday night – saw Charlie Wilson’s War which is an excellent cold war political drama starring Tom Hanks. Full of history, humour, and irony, if you like The West Wing (my all time favourite TV show) then you’ll probably appreciate this movie. I also like the understated way the movie referenced the USA’s failure to capitalise on its victory over the Soviets in Afghanistan – as the characters discuss the dangers of not following through with helping rebuild the country, you hear the ominous sound of a jet airliner flying over Washington in the background.

Saturday we took the kids to Garden City Shopping Centre in Booragoon to do a bit of shopping and see a movie. Our only choice was Alvin & the Chipmunks which was not the best but the kids seemed to enjoy it. While doing that I dropped our Prado into a hand car wash they have in the undercover carpark there to get all the dirt off it from our previous weekend down south. The beauty of that place is not only do they do a great job for a pretty good price, but it saves me having to drive around for 20 minutes looking for parking. Now the car looks like new again, or perhaps even better than new

Speaking of last weekend, I’ve posted a video on YouTube with some footage I took while we were down south. Have a look here if you like :

In the next few days I’ll upload the rest of the video. Also I’ve posted all the photos from the trip on my flickr page.

Another video I quickly threw together – this one is Owen and Luke playing around in London…

As promised, here is the first YouTube video from my recent Uganda trip. It’s a demonstration we had when we visited the equator – water really does go down the drain in opposite directions in the northern and southern hemispheres!

More videos coming soon. This one was made using Windows Movie Maker, and although the quality is not too bad it crashed about 11 times in the process. I don’t think it handles the Quicktime files that my camera produces very well. Can’t wait til I get my MacBook and see how good that is…

Fairly quiet day at work thus far. No babies being born and plenty of gaps between patients. Which has given me plenty of time to catch up on some internet jobs – paid a few bills and started tidying up my Flickr photos. I’ve now given titles to all the photos in my Africa 2007 and Africa 2006 sets. As promised I also have a bunch of short video clips taken on my camera which I will upload to YouTube soon. These include videos of the lions in Johannesburg, kids in Uganda, church at KPC, riding a boda-boda motorcycle through town, and from the concert we visited. Because they are all in Quicktime MOV format, I’m just waiting til I get my new MacBook in a week or so because I think that will be easier to do than on a PC. But I promise to get them up ASAP. Watch this space.

It’s been a long day thus far but finally I find myself in the lounge at Johannesburg airport. I woke up at 3:30, expecting to be picked up to be taken to the airport at 4am, but my ride didn’t arrive until 4:50. I was just about to try and get a taxi when they finally showed.

When I arrived at the airport I discovered that, since my paper ticket originally was for a different date, I was unable to check my bags right through to Sydney for my flight this afternoon. This meant that I had to go through South African customs and collect my bag, only then to be told that I had to wait another 3 hours before I could check in for my Sydney flight and get through to the good departure lounge.

When I finally did get through, feeling sore in the neck and mid back I saw a shop offering seated massage for 120 Rand (around $20). After being pummelled by a middle aged African woman for 20 minutes I can now say that instead of being sore in those spots, I am now sore all over (wish I had my sports therapist friend from our medical team here!). So some Voltaren gel from the chemist and an excellent glass of red from the Diners lounge are my next strategy.

OK, now thats today out of the way – let me go back to discuss something much more fun – last night. Five of our group decided to go to a concert by one of the singers from KPC church, called Enoch. Actually it was not just his concert. His band was the headline act but was well supported by a bunch of other performers – soloists, dancers, rappers, an a-capella group, and a Ugandan comedian! We were expecting it to be some dingy hall or club but in fact it was a beautiful modern theatre. And the concert was fantastic. All of the artists were good, especially Enoch and his band, who were great musicians – particularly the lead guitarist and bass player. I got a lot of video of it on my digital camera so I’ll endeavour to post some on here in the next few days.

Only a small group of us went which meant for me I was able to avoid the goodbyes with most of the other members of the team. I’m not one for goodbyes so that suited me. But it was nice because the four that I was with last night were the ones that I connected with the most during the trip – friendships born out of a similar outlook on life, interests, sense-of-humour, musical tastes, and a little bit of adversity thrown in (especially in the case of my two partners in criminology, Emma and Mairin). I’m not always strong at making friendships, so aside from all the mission and medical aspects of the trip, connecting with these guys was one of the highlights for me. There were plenty of other great people on the team too, but with these guys we just clicked, which was great. The other cool thing about our team this year was that it was more multidisciplinary in nature. In addition to two doctors and a bunch of nurses, we had a physio/sports therapist, speech pathologist, and a couple of lab scientists. I was doubtful going in to the trip how much they would have to do, but they really added a huge amount to what we were able to achieve.

Anyway time to go grab some more food, and drink – and then maybe a shower before I board the plane…

My last day in Uganda today, and I’ve decided to get some downtime in order to pack and get organised before leaving tomorrow. The rest of the team went out to have lunch in one of the Watoto villages after church whilst I elected to remain at the hotel. Good thing I did, it’s taken me over 2 hours to get sorted.

Yesterday we went rafting the Nile River at Jinja – one of the best white water rafting spots in the world I am told, with plenty of big grade 5 rapids and falls. And what a great day we had. I was with a fantastic group – four of the more adventurous members of our medical team plus two English guys and a Dutchman.We decided from the outset that we were going to go hard – for every rapid if there was an easy option (aka “chicken”) or a risky one, we would take the crazy route. Consequently I think we ended up being flipped or thrown out of our raft more than any other group and with plenty of cuts and bruises amongst us, but it was well worth it. I can’t wait to see the DVD of the day’s action. The only time we didn’t manage to go the hard core route we flipped before we even reached the rapid – we were paddling hard to the left, where the faster, bigger rapid was, but the current pushed us hard up against a big rock on the side of the river. Our boat flipped and got sucked under the rock. Two guys ended up going down the difficult part of the rapid on their own, minus the boat. I found myself in an air pocket underneath the boat, and then we managed to flip the boat and scramble back on, just in time for the current to take us down the right, easier option. Another time we put the lightest member of our crew (Dr Jess) at the front on the boat whilst the rest of us crowded at the back – as a result when we hit the falls our boat went vertical and high. We managed to remain afloat though thanks to the efforts of Jess who was hanging on for dear life even as she was flung sideways in the air out of the boat. If she had’ve let go our boat would have completely flipped, but hanging on she provided the counterweight allowing us to land right way up. Ours was only one of two boats to try this crazy manoevre, and the only one to come out intact. Once again, can’t wait to see how that looks on the DVD.

Tonight we’re off to a concert featuring a musician from the church here amongst other people. I’m looking forward but hope it doesn’t go too late, since my transportation for the airport leaves at 4am tomorrow Then my itinerary is a morning flight down to Johannesburg, then several hours in the airport lounge probably, then leaving at 5pm for a flight across to Sydney. This arrives at 2pm on Tuesday, and then I have a 5pm flight back across the continent to Perth, arriving at 8:45pm. I rang the airline to try and get an upgrade for the Jo’burg to Sydney leg but it just wasn’t possible. I expect my next update will be from Johannesburg tomorrow – hopefully if the net is fast enough I can post some pictures.

And so it ends. Finally today after two full weeks of clinic, we saw our last patient. Actually my last patient was a home visit to a mother with HIV/AIDS who was in pretty bad shape. Hopefully they will get her to a hospital for some more intensive testing and treatment and she will be okay. Her case illustrated another obstacle to adequate HIV treatment – superstition. She, like many other people, was in denial about her HIV status, rather believing that she had been cursed by a witch or something along those lines. Just last night I was reading in my book “The Shadow of the Sun” by Ryszard Kapuscinski, about how prevalent such beliefs are in Africa. Even amongst Christians, they still hold on to a lot of these traditional beliefs as well.

Now that I’ve mentioned this book, let me just say that this is one of the best books on Africa I’ve read thus far. Kapuscinski is a Polish journalist who spent over 40 years in Africa as a correspondent. The book contains a series of vignettes – portraits of everyday Africans and everyday African life from all over the continent – combined with brief historical lessons and philosophical musings.  It’s amazing how much of what he writes rings true, especially reading it whilst over here. And he really gets into the unseen life of the African populace like no other author I’ve read. Not just touching on the shakers and movers, he visits the homes of the millions upon millions of people eking out a meagre existence and ponders why? For anyone who has ever been to Africa or has any interest in the place, this is a must read book.

As I said, today was our last clinic. I think we probably saw over a thousand people in the last two weeks, and I believe we made a difference in the lives of many of those. If nothing else we showed them that somebody cares. Tonight the girls on our team are at a Women’s Conference at KPC church, whilst the two of us men caught a boda boda to the shops, did a little shopping, had a nice pizza, and then discovered that the “best” internet cafe in town was again not working. But not to be deterred we walked down the hill into Kampala central and found an ever better one – the most productive half hour I think I’ve ever spent on the net in Uganda. Tomorrow we are heading off to Jinja to raft the rapids of the Nile, Sunday it’s church and then a concert in the evening, and early morning on Monday I leave on my journey home. Can’t wait to see my family again. This trip has been great, but I have missed them so much.

This is my second attempt at using the internet today. The first was at the “best internet cafe” in town and I sat there for an hour with no connection – but at least I got my photos backed up and the last blog entry typed. This time I am at a cafe near our hotel that has failed me several times before, but actually seems reasonably quick tonight. Just shows how totally unpredictable the net is here in Kampala.

Anyway here’s a few photos from the past few days…

The view from the front of our clinic on Suubi mountain – breathtaking!

Some of the crowd outside our clinic – we saw over 160 patients today.

Two brothers we saw – no parents in sight. Very common for children of a young age to care for their siblings here like this, and very common to see boys wearing dresses – they can’t afford any other clothes.

This is the boy I discussed in my previous post, not long after he was brought in with a seizure on Tuesday.

And this is the same boy with his new shirt, given to him by our physio Mairin – looking much happier!

The view from our hotel the other night when we had a massive storm – you can see the Old Kampala Mosque in the foreground and the Kampala ’skyline’  in the background.

Kampala is a very religious city. You see plenty of posters like this advertising various “crusades” (I hate that term- conjures up images of some of Christianity’s darkest moments) – anyway many of the look shonky and we found this one for “Pastor Augustine” particularly amusing – can’t decide if he’s a pastor or a hip-hop artist

Some of the many shops we pass on the road outside Kampala, with big piles of green ‘matoke’ bananas out front.

Well that’s all for now – time for me to head to bed. We went for an appreciation dinner with Watoto tonight to Kampala’s best Chinese restaurant- the food there is always tremendous and it’s a beautiful setting. Tomorrow is the last day of the medical clinics and I can’t say I’m sorry to be seeing the end of it. It has been quite exhausting work, although still very worthwhile. I’ll update again on the weekend if I get time.

Another hectic day in the clinic today – much of the same stuff  – otherwise treatable chronic diseases compounded by poverty. Many of these would be eminently more manageable back home – diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, epilepsy – but the people here just cannot afford ongoing treatment. And the backbreaking hand to mouth, one day at a time lifestyle contributes to it – men, women, and children all do their share of the physical work required for these rural households to survive. And this is in a beautiful, fertile land where there is plenty of rain and plants and crops and animals can thrive. Imagine what the more desolate, inhospitable areas of northern Uganda and much of the rest of Africa must be like.

But as is well known, the current number one scourge of Africa is HIV/AIDS – a more serious disease, but nevertheless one which is quite treatable with modern medications. My first patient of the day was a lady I had seen late the day before and ordered an HIV test on. I had to break the news to her of the positive result, encourage her to travel to the city to seek treatment in a public hospital clinic, and to arrange for her husband and 5 children to be tested. The husband will hopefully be coming to see us tomorrow. As for the children, they apparently live far distant from here, with another relative, and she could not envisage being able to get them either to us or to the city HIV clinic. In fact it is doubtful whether she can make it there herself. Probably only about 50km away, but a vast distance for someone with no form of transportation and no money.

Another patient was a lady who previously had had a positive test, but had not accessed any treatment. It transpired that the reason for this was that she was newly married and was afraid to tell her husband the result. She was looking for a way to access the treatment without him finding out, an even more tricky proposition. We encouraged her to tell him so he and the children could be tested but didn’t have much hope of her actually doing so. Another person, maybe even a whole family, who may die unnecesarily from this disease.

HIV is not the killer here – it is poverty and ignorance. The treatments themselves are not that expensive – the UNAIDS program supplies large quantities of anti-HIV drugs and Uganda now even has their own factory to manufacture them. It is the lack of infrastructure and the difficulty in getting the drugs out to the people outside of the cities who need them that kills. Like all problems in Africa, it is one to which there is no easy solution….

Kampala last night was a crazy, choatic, wonderful combination of torrential rains, thunder and lightning, traffic jams, crashes and floods. The weather pattern I’ve generally noticed here is an early morning storm before dawn, usually dry days, and then sometimes a thunderstorm at night. The previous night we sat on the balcony for a long while watching a spectacular lightning show. But nothing has compared to the storm we had yesterday afternoon just after we arrived back at the hotel. Within minutes of the rain starting to pour and the lightning started to flash, the streets around us were flooded, drains overflowing – one of the most amazing storms I’ve seen.

The chaos from the storm continued long after the rains had eased. A few of us squeezed into a taxi and drove across town to a beautiful Belgian restaurant in Kabalagala, Le Chateau. Was great to get out and escape the hotel food again, and the dinner was a treat. I had a beautiful steak with mushroom sauce for the main course, yummy Belgian ice-cream for dessert, and for the entre we shared some frog-legs and escargot which were delicious. A great night out after a busy day working in the community clinic (I’ll update on that stuff later, when I get a chance.) But on the way home traffic was at a standstill, accidents everywhere – one of the worst traffic jams I’ve seen even here in Kampala. In the end as soon as our taxi was in sight of the hotel we decided to get out and walk through the traffic in the rain since it was moving so slowly.

Ten minutes remaining on my net time (if it works – things have been really unreliable here this week) so I’ll update on the mission stuff. This week we’ve been out at Suubi village, a beautiful spot on a big hill quite a way out of Kampala. We set up a clinic in one of the Watoto buildings for the people in the surrounding community. Over the past few days we’ve had hundreds of people through. Once again many common conditions, infections, rashes, ulcers etc – and a few more serious ones – a baby with HIV, a child with a tumour, malaria, and a poor epileptic boy aged 13 whose family had basically given up on him. He had been having seizures since the age of 6 months, poorly controlled on meds, when his family had been able to get them for him. He was brought into me having had a seizure whilst waiting outside. I got some history from his mum – he didn’t go to school, didn’t play, didn’t even do any work around the home – basically he was a big embarassment and burden to the family. Back home, such a child would usually be able to attend school and have a pretty normal life, but here a treatable condition has left him severely disabled and neglected. We got him a good supply of better meds, and when we saw him again today one of the girls on the team gave him a new soccer shirt that she had, which lit up his previously dulled face with a huge smile. She demonstrated to the mother that this child did have the capacity to interact and even quickly learn new skills. Hopefully even these simple measures may go some way towards improving this poor boy’s quality of life.

Anyway, time’s nearly up. I’m quite worn out from the clinics, especially after today when I saw over sixty patients. Two more days of this to go, then we’re rafting the Nile on Saturday, church on Sunday, and then I leave for my 2 day journey home early on Monday morning (and I can’t wait to see Jenni and the boys again – missing them heaps). I’ll try and get on and update more, including some photos, if I find the time and the bandwidth between now and then.

A welcome change of pace today. The two doctors on the team, myself and Jess, went over to the Watoto Babies Home – Bulrushes, to do some checks on a few of the babies, whilst the rest of the team went back out to the villages to do various things.

The Bulrushes babies are in pretty good shape, considering these are orphans who a few months back were abandoned, some in terrible conditions. Like all Watoto children, they are well taken care of. Nevertheless, put 40 to 50 babies in the same building, especially ones who may have pre-existing illnesses, and various health problems are bound to develop. We saw about 15 or so this morning, most of whom fortunately had fairly minor problems. After that we spent a while just hanging out and playing with the babies which was fun. One of the babies I saw today I remembered from when we were here briefly in July. His name was Junior and when he was first taken in as a premature baby he was very sick with HIV and PCP pneumonia. Well, three months later with a bit of feeding, some antiretroviral medication, and a lot of love and good care, and he is doing well – gaining weight, smiling and in good health, as you may see in the first picture below. I continue to be incredibly impressed with the standard of care provided in the Bulrushes.

After we were finished there we took a walk along to the Garden City shopping mall for lunch and shopping. A call to the rest of the team revealed they are hours away from meeting us here so we decided to take a walk down the hill into the Kampala CBD before coming back here to the internet. Here’s a few photos I snapped on the way around. They’ve really been working hard preparing for CHOGM, the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, which is happening here in a couple of weeks – so much that asking a person if they are “ready for CHOGM” is a standing joke around here. From the state of most of the works though, I doubt if they will be ready on time. I’m not sure if our Prime Minister is still planning to attend CHOGM in the midst of the current election campaign, but I hope he does, if only for the chance to see a bit of Uganda on Australian TV back home.

The bottom picture is yet another local restaurant sign

Finally, I’m going to try and upload a few pictures from the clinics during the week, which I will add to that blog entry, so go back and take a look at that.

I mentioned the other day how the schedule for this medical mission looked exhausting. Well I sure feel exhuasted now, but for today at least I only have myself to blame…

But first to backtrack a little to Sunday. We spent the morning at a church service at KPC which was great. Their worship team and massive African choir is phenomenal. Most of the songs they did were western worship songs, but I don’t know many except for a couple of Hillsong tunes. Even so, they were all brilliant. The message was interesting too, taken from Nehemiah, but with a lot of local cultural and political references which made it all the more interesting. Generally there’s nothing too exotic or zany in a KPC service (speaking from an Australian Churches of Christ point of view) but one thing that was a little different was where the whole congregation (of about 2,000 or so – one of four such services at their central campus alone) gathered in groups of 3 or 4 to pray for the family of a prominent lawyer and church member who had died in childbirth just a couple of days earlier, leaving her husband to care for her other children and this brand new baby, who will never know his mother. For some reason I felt particularly touched by that situation, but it also shows that even being wealthy doesn’t necessarily guarantee your health in a country like this.

In the afternoon we visited the craft markets and then the main shops at Garden City. Me and the other doctor, Jess, took a short cut there on boda-boda motorcycle taxis, to the apparent disapproval of some of the older women on the team. But I’ve done it many times before and will continue to do so – it’s fast, cheap, and pretty safe.

When we arrived back at the hotel a few of the younger members of the group went out for a walk, up to the Sanyu craft shop, which is about 5 minutes walk from our hotel. Then we had a look in the beautiful Anglican cathedral, St Paul’s, a majestic building that has stood on the top of one of Kampala’s main hills since around 1915. Three previous cathedrals had been burned or blown down prior to that but this massive building is not going anywhere. We then continued to walk around for a while longer before dinner. It’s great this time to be with people who are more interested in getting out and exploring the city.

St Paul’s Cathedral – Namirembe

Residential area near Old Kampala

Sign for a Kampala “restrunt”

Today we bussed out to Bbira Watoto Village, where we had a good tour around, and started to get organised for our clinics this week. We also ended up seeing about 30 or so of the Watoto children in the clinic, but most of them are pretty healthy, coming in with viral illnesses, cuts and scrapes. It will be a different story when we begin to see some of the villagers from the surrounding communities tomorrow.

Since we arrived back at the hotel fairly early a few of us again decided to venture out into the city in the couple of hours before dinner. Some were going to walk, and a couple were going to run. For some crazy reason I joined the running group. One of these women runs marathons but they went at a nice slow pace and initially I kept up pretty well. Surprisingly quickly we found ourselves smack in the middle of Kampala city, trying to weave between cars, taxis, bikes and pedestrians. Being on a boda-boda is safe compared to jogging near the Kampala taxi parks. No-one seems to jog in Kamapala so we got a few odd looks, and had a couple of kids try and race us. Most of the way was downhill but the last section into the city was uphill, as was much of the way back. I stayed with them until I was sure they could find their way back to the hotel, and then I elected to send them on their way and walk the rest of the way myself. This has definitely firmed my resolve to think about maybe considering re-joining the gym this summer when I get back. On returning to the hotel I remembered a fact with which I can console myself a little – Kampala, and most of southern Uganda, is at an altitide of over 1000m above sea level – so running here is kinda like the altitude training elite atheletes do. Plus the pollution in the city doesn’t help either. Now that I have had a shower and recovered I feel pretty good. I will probably run again. I definitely feel more motivated to do some sort of exercise than I have in the last few years.

But we’ll see how much energy I have tomorrow afternoon, after the first of our clinics open to the community…

Yet again I find myself back in Uganda. I arrived last night after a pleasant flight from South Africa. The place we are staying seems quite good. I have a big room to myself, which is air conditioned. And it’s a quite central location so just a short drive or boda-boda ride into the CBD.

Today we went over the the main Watoto office at Kampala Pentecostal Church (KPC) for a meet and greet and to go over the general plan for the medical mission. I must say, I look at the schedule with some degree of trepidation, remembering how exhausting some of the clinic days were last year. This year they seem to have even more planned, with very little down time. It’s okay for the nurses who make up the vast majority of the team and hence can do other things like hospital teaching, or just exempt themselves for a day if they get tired. As one of two doctors, I don’t really have that luxury, as the clinics can’t run without us. But it’s all not about me anyway so I’ll do my best for the next two weeks to cope. I do think there is the potential for us to do a lot of good work here.

As for the team, everyone seems nice. It’s a fair bit bigger than last year – mostly comprised of Australians and Canadians with a couple of people from the USA and UK. After lunch today at Sam’s restaurant (I had an enjoyable Ostrich steak) we took a drive to the southwest for an hour or so through the beautiful Ugandan countryside and stopped at the equator. A guy there treated us to an interesting demonstration of how water spins in opposite directions either side of the equator, and just drains directly down when you are on the line itself. I got some video of it on my camera so may upload it onto YouTube after I get home.

Just about to go and have dinner, and tomorrow we are off to church at KPC in the morning. The medical mission begins in earnest on Monday so pray for safety, energy, but most of all effectiveness. Hopefully we can go some way to helping the physical and spiritual needs of some of the people here. Will update again soon.

One of the prime reasons to go to a cafe is to avoid having to drink something like Nescafe – Hence this cafe I saw yesterday in one of Johannesbrg’s fanciest shopping malls, Sandton City, seems to me to be a complete oxymoron – why on earth would anyone go to a place called Cafe Nescafe? I’m sure my mate Dean would agree. I never worked up the courage to give their coffee a try. Instead I settled for a reasonable latte in a place called Mugg & Bean.

Currently I’m settled in the Diners lounge in Jo’burg airport, drinking a nice South African Cab Sav, waiting for my flight which leaves for Uganda in a couple of hours. Aside from the Lion Park I had a fairly relaxing time doing not much yesterday. I managed to get a bit lost driving across Johannesburg on my way back to my hotel. There were a couple of areas which my guidebook had instructed me to avoid if at all possible – somehow I managed to end up driving through both of them, yet I emerged unscathed at the end of the day.

Next update will be from Uganda, at some point in the next couple of days hopefully…

PS : more lion park photos are up on my flickr page.

….well maybe that should be lion with a little “l”…

The highlight of an otherwise dreary day today in Johannesburg was a visit to the Lion Park. I got to cuddle a couple of 4 month old lion cubs. They gave me a good lick and enjoyed a pat and scratch, but then one of them started to get a bit carried away, chewing on my shoelaces, then my jeans, and then having a good munch on my arm and then my side. I still have the scratches to prove it. Jen seemed a bit worried when I texted her to say I’d been bitten by a lion

After “cub world” I got back in my rental car and took a long drive around the lion park. That was fantastic too. They had a big range of animals including zebra, antelope, ostrich and hyenas, but the highlight was once again the lions, of which there were probably about 30 or 40. I could just drive by and take pictures of them just a metre or so away. It was a bit nerve wracking at times when I had a bunch of lions either side of the car, trying to film one whilst keeping a a wary eye on the other. A couple of times they just got up and walked nonchalantly in front of the car. Very cool.

I’ve got a whole lot more photos. I’ll upload them to my flickr page later when I get time. But first I’m overdue for dinner. 

Good morning from not so sunny South Africa. Actually it’s pretty cold here in Johannesburg – 9 degrees. I had a fairly smooth, but long flight from Perth overnight. I got a bit of interrupted sleep but still feel pretty tired now. In the end I gave up and sleeping and watched the mildly entertaining in-flight movie The Wendall Baker Story, starring Luke Wilson, with the usual appearances from Will Ferrell and brother Owen Wilson. I always liked those Wilson boys Owen and Luke. Was sadden to hear about Owen’s recent suicide attempt. Hope we see him back on the big screen again soon.

Also, whilst waiting in the airport last night, I listened to Radiohead’s new album In Rainbows, which I downloaded yesterday afternoon. It’s actually a pretty good album, perhaps their most accessible since OK computer, thus making their exclusively online distribution experiment even more interesting.

Right now I’m in the Diners Club (or Premier Club) arrivals lounge at the airport. Free coffee, juice, soft drinks, free hot breakfast and a wonderful shower have gone some way to making me feel human again. Seriously this is the coolest shower I’ve ever seen. It has so many options and dials and different places for the water to come out. I even took a picture – check it out here. Once I’m done here I’ll try and dump my bags at my hotel, which is just around the corner, then rent a car and head off to explore Johannesburg. Hopefully the dodgy weather will keep the criminals away. First stop might have to be the Lion Park.

I’m heading off tonight for another trip to Uganda, for the second annual Watoto international medical team mission. This time we have at least one other doctor to share the load, as well as plenty of nurses and I believe some basic lab facilities. It will be interesting to see how it all goes and what we accomplish.

However I go with some degree of mixed feelings as I’m leaving Jenni and the boys for nearly three weeks, and will miss Jen’s major 19 week ultrasound of the baby next week. I had a listen to the heartbeat last night and it sounds great (like a choo choo train) but it’s not the same as being able to see the baby on a video screen.

Not sure yet as to the schedule for the medical stuff, but my basic itinerary for travel is as follows :

• 10 Oct – fly Perth to Johannesburg  – 2355 – 0525 (overnight)
• 12 Oct – Johannesburg to Entebbe, Uganda – 1400 – 1710
• 29 Oct – Entebbe to Johannesburg – 0725 – 1040
• 29 Oct – Johannesburg to Sydney – 1750 – 1435 (overnight)
• 30 Oct – Sydney to Perth – 1750 – 2045

As you can see the return trip is unneccesarily long, but flying via Sydney was the only way I could use my frequent flyer points to pay for the trip. And I have a solid day and a half to kill in Johannesburg when I arrive tomorrow morning. At this stage my plan is to try and dump my luggage at the hotel I have booked for the night, grab a rental car and do some exploring of this city. One of the places I’ve discovered on the net is a Lion park where you can play with cubs as well as see the bigger lions and other animals so that might be a good way to spend a few hours.

Anyway, wish me luck and any prayers would be appreciated. I will do my best to update this blog regularly, time and internet access permitting.

I’m reading a very interesting book at the moment. It’s a travel book, which is a genre that I have a growing enjoyment of, being well and truly infected with the travel bug (my case of travel bug continues to grow, although Jenni is well and truly over it, no doubt in part due to the rigours of early pregnancy…)

Anyway, it’s a travel book with a difference – Tony Wheeler’s Badlands. In this book Tony, the founder of Lonely Planet, describes some of his experiences in some of the world’s dodgiest countries – Afghanistan, Iraq, Cuba, Libya, and North Korea, among others. It’s a fascinating read that describes some of the problems he saw in these countries, but also many of the lesser known tourist delights to be found there. I’ve just read the chapter on Iran and it comes across as being a really great place to visit, with heaps to see and very welcoming people, quite different to the scary image we see in the media all the time. I must say all the Iranians/Persians I’ve ever met here in Australia have always been very friendly. This book makes me really want to go there (though I can’t see that happening any time soon) – it also makes me hope even more that Bush & Co don’t embark on another crazy military misadventure by bombing or invading Iran – political disasters aside, it would be a shame to see the people of that country (which is relatively stable internally) be drawn into a mess like we have in Iraq.

Anyway I digress. This book is an enjoyable, easy read and well worth checking out if you have an interest in out of the way places. Just be warned, the dreaded travel bug is definitely lurking within these pages too…

WesternAustralia.tv

It’s often hard for locals to get enthusiastic about Western Australian tourism. We love living here but if you ask us to tell someone why they should visit we don’t find it particularly easy. I’m not sure why that is but I know I felt a little bit of that feeling when talking with our friends in the US recently. I think a couple of the big challenges to WA tourism stem from our geography – firstly our isolation means you really have to have a good reason to go the extra mile (or 2000 miles) to travel here when visiting the Eastern states, and secondly the vast distances involved within WA mean many of the potential tourist draws may be thousands of kilometres apart.

The above site (which I found on Rodney’s blog) goes a long way towards addressing this ineptitude on our part. It’s ostensibly a tourism advertising site, but features heaps of cool videos which demonstrate what a great place WA is. If you’re a local, check it out and remind yourself of how lucky we are to live in a place like this… and if you’re not a local, check it out and you’ll want to become one

Here’s a sample…

As I keep telling everyone it’s good to be home, although I’m less enthusiastic about being back here at work today. Looks like one of my patients will be having her baby later today also, so it’s not even a gentle ease back into work. Nothing much seems to have changed though. I’ve been here 2 hours and already half of my patients have either been late or not turned up at all.

We arrived home from Sydney late on Friday night and have spent the last 3 days unpacking, catching up with family, and starting to get the house organised again. I’m aware of the need to be organised as it’s less than 2 months now before my next trip to Uganda, which will be more full-on two weeks plus of medical work. I’m sure that time is going to fly.

Overall it was a great trip – we went to some cool places and spent time with some great people. It was good to be able to relax a bit in Hawaii last week since by that point we were all getting a little tired, especially the kids and Jen. I’m totally sold now on the concept of a tropical island vacation As for the round-the-world trip idea it might be a few years before we attempt such an ambitious trip again, especially since we have a new baby coming in March next year and we would want to wait until that child is 3 or 4 before we were to travel on so many flights. So for the next couple of years we’ll keep our family holidays within Australia or nearby countries. Having said all that I really loved visiting America so I do look forward to getting back there at the first opportunity.

OK, time to go check if any of my patients have showed up…

Final day of our trip today and we’re looking forward to being home in a few hours. At the moment I’m on an internet kiosk in the lobby of our hotel in Sydney whilst waiting for a taxi to come and take us to the airport. We arrived here last night after a 10 hour flight from Honolulu and spent the morning having a quick look around Sydney. Caught a ferry from Darling Harbour to Circular Quay, took the obligatory Opera House and Harbour Bridge Photos, walked into the city, relaxed in Hyde Park, browsed the Queen Victoria Building shops, and then caught the monorail back to Paddy’s Market’s which are directly across from our hotel. A very rushed day in Sydney, but not a bad one. The weather here is absolutely perfect although I’m afraid the forecast for home in Perth doesn’t look so pleasant.

The few days we had in Hawaii were great. It’s such a beautiful place that I look forward to visiting again. The first day we spent in Waikiki, hanging around town and then on the beach. The next day we took a drive to the North Shore, had a swim and snorkel in Waimea Bay and then drove clockwise around the island of Oahu back to our hotel in Waikiki. Certainly it was one of the more scenic drives I’ve ever had – so many beautiful beaches and spectacular mountains. On the third day we went to see the memorial at Pearl Harbour but the wait was over an hour and the kids were too tired to endure it, so we ended up going into Downtown Honolulu for a while and then spent the afternoon swimming before a wonderful dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, as recommended by my mum.

Anyway our taxi should be here in a minute so I’d better go. Next time I update it will be from home :0)

Aloha! This morning I awoke to find myself in Hawai’i, and so far it is living up to expectations – beautiful surroundings, perfect beaches, friendly people. After another sub-par American Airlines flight from LA (they had the five of us, including 2 little kids, seated in five randomly separated seats – this time it didn’t take too much time to fix it) I was exhausted last night, and couldn’t wait to collapse into bed, after hauling the luggage up to our rooms and consuming the obligatory Hawaiian pizza.

This morning I woke up, pulled open the blinds, and I was in paradise. This is the view from our hotel in Waikiki…

We decided to take a leisurely stroll through the streets of Waikiki, had breakfast, and did a bit of shopping at a local market. Waikiki is very reminiscent of the Gold Coast back home but somehow feels a lot more relaxed and less frantic. I’m not sure if it was because it was Sunday morning but there weren’t too many people about, except on the beach itself, which is where we will be heading after lunch. The other thing that surprised me about Waikiki is how compact it is, once again compared to the Gold Coast. There’s only two or three streets between the beach and the Ala Wai canal, and the length of the strip is only a mile or so.

The other thing I found amusing was that driving the streets of Honolulu and Waikiki last night felt somehow familiar, and then I realised it was because of my Xbox 360 game, Test Drive Unlimited, which is set on Oahu. I now realise just how authentic that game actually is. I could have brought the map out of the game box and it would have helped me get around here. I look forward to taking a drive out in the countryside tomorrow and taking in some of the scenery of this beautiful island

I suppose I should also recap on the last few days, since it’s been a little while since I last blogged. Thursday we went to Disney’s California Adventure Park, which was surprisingly good.Much quieter than Disneyland itself but with a heap of good things to look at and some great rides – the best of the ones I went on were the California Screamin’ roller coaster and the Grizzly River Rapids ride. Friday we took it fairly easy, did a bit of shopping at a huge mall in Orange County – South Coast Plaza, and took the kids to see the new movie Underdog, which was excellent.

And that’s our plan for the next three days we have in Hawaii – take it fairly easy. Spend some time on the beach, take some drives around the island and mostly just relax. I don’t know if we will get around to see the big tourist sites like Pearl Harbour since the kids probably don’t have the energy and patience at this stage of the trip. Any suggestions for things to do or places to visit from Hawaii veterans out there?

Today we again went to Disneyland, and this time had a much better day than we did on Saturday. It was a bit cooler and less crowded (although we ended up missing out on the Nemo ride since we didn’t want to spend two and a half hours in line). Overall we did a lot more rides and had a great time. Owen once again got to take part in Jedi training – now he has fought both Darth Vader and Darth Maul, and we watched the Disney parade which was nice. Best ride of the day was Splash Mountain. Tomorrow we hit Disney’s California Adventure park.

For now, here’s a few photos from our time so far in California – from Disneyland, Legoland, and in Hollywood. I’ll leave it up to you to work out which is which…

Quick update from our last few days in California.

We arrived on Friday (eventually) after an extended delay when our plane broke down at Dallas airport. They found us another one and we managed to get to LA, get our car and make it to our hotel in Anaheim before dark.

Saturday we went to Disneyland, which was perhaps not the brightest idea. It was very busy and quite hot so much of they day was spent sweltering in lines. They have a fast-pass system where you can take a ticket and come back later to avoid the queues but you can only get one such ticket every 2-3 hours which kinda defeats the purpose. My favourite ride so far was Space mountain but we’ll be going back tomorrow to do the rides we missed on Saturday. Also disappointing was just how few Disney characters were walking around – compared to say Movie World in Queensland there were much less characters to take photos with.

Sunday was a quiet day – spent time in the hotel and went and saw The Simpsons movie which was great. I had planned to maybe go and check out Saddleback Church which is not too far from here but by the time we’d slept in that idea was out the window. Guess I’ll be well and truly overdue for some church time when we get back.

Yesterday we drove down to California Legoland, which is towards San Diego. In contrast to Disney, we had a great day there – plenty of cool rides and interesting things to see. It wasn’t quite as hot but there were plenty of opportunities to get soaking wet which we took advantage of. Food and merchandise were not too exorbitant there and they had a cool “pick n mix” shop where you can fill a bag with all sorts of Lego pieces so I grabbed a pounds worth. I used to love Lego when I was a kid and my boys are showing a similar liking so it’s good to build the collection. Would definitely advise everyone travelling to southern California to consider spending a day there. And if you do, be on the lookout for coupons – almost everyone I could see buying tickets had coupons of one sort or another. I was lucky that on the night before I’d seen an ad for Burger King offering some free child entry coupons with any purchase so that morning before we left I drove around the corner to “BK’s” and for the price of a cup of coffee got some coupons which saved us $88, getting both kids in for free!

Today I had considered hitting Disneyland for the second time but once again by the time we were all up and ready it was a bit late. Also Owen was feeling a bit worn out today so in the end we left him in the hotel with his Nanna, and Jen and Luke and I drove up to Hollywood, which was actually quite a pleasant day. We saw the Hollywood sign, walked along the walk of Stars on Hollywood Blvd, and Luke got his photo with a heap of movie characters (there were more there than at Disney, including an amazingly true to life Captain Jack Sparrow) – on the way home we cruised along Sunset Boulevard, where I received a text message saying that my newest nephew “Toby” had just been born. Congratulations Scoot & Kim and family! Weirdly, his birthday is the 1st of August which is strange considering it’s still the 31st of July here – his birthday is in the future! Anyway we thought it was kinda weird and cool.

But for now Jen is wanting to use the laptop so I’ll bring this post to an end. I’ll try and get a few pics up in the next day or two.

Sitting here in DFW Airport in Dallas with a couple of hours break between flights on our way from Nashville to Los Angeles. This has been one of the better airports we’ve visited on our travels. Our flying experiences have been a real mixed bag. If I had to generalize, I’d say that the airports here in the US are much more efficient than those in England. Nashville airport, like the city in general, was compact but very pleasant and friendly and easy to get around. Boston airport, the first we hit in the US, was also full of helpful staff, although we really had to rush to make our connection there. And Dallas so far, though much bigger, has been fine. Not too far to walk with a monorail running between terminals. The only dodgy thing about this place has been watching out the window the baggage handlers roughly throwing luggage onto a plane and imagining my new guitar, which is checked in somewhere in this airport, being treated in a similar way. Otherwise, it’s been nice here exchanging a few text messages with ob1, who happens to be staying here in Dallas at the moment. In fact, when we arrive in LA tonight it will be the first stop on our travels where we haven’t had someone we know to catch up with.

English airports were much more crowded, rushed, and disorganised. Queues were much longer and security staff less pleasant. In Manchester airport we had to wait nearly an hour for our flight’s luggage to start circulating – longer than the time we spent in the air! At Heathrow our plane was waiting for 40 minutes or so on the tarmac for someone to come and attach the doors so we could get out.

So that’s airports – how about airlines? South African airways were fine – nothing too special but no problems. British Airways we had a long flight from Africa with great service, individual seat TVs etc and then a short flight to Manchester with pretty average service. American airlines have been okay, although our first flight today had a water leak dripping from the ceiling on take-off. The other airline we flew was American Eagle, which I wasn’t very impressed with – disorganised check-in, average in-flight service and a tiny plane with a bumpy ride that made us all a little sick, especially Jennifer..

From here on in we’ve only got four more flights between here and home – two on American airlines : from here to LA today and then to Honolulu next Saturday, and then two on Qantas : from Hawaii to Sydney and then Sydney to Perth. In 2 weeks from today we’ll be home.

Today’s our last full day in Nashville so it’s  good time to share some of my impressions of the place before we fly off to Los Angeles tomorrow.

Firstly, Nashville is a very easy city to get around by road. They have an excellent system of concentric ring freeways with other freeways radiating out like spokes on a wheel. You can get anywhere in town fairly fast. Yesterday evening we headed out to visit Jen’s cousin at his house. On the map it looked like it was halfway across town, but it really didn’t take us long to get there at all. I’ve found driving here to be generally a fairly easy experience, once I got used to driving on the wrong side of the road.

One thing that’s impossible not to notice driving around Nashville is just how many churches there are. It’s not hard to see why they call this city the Protestant Vatican. It would not be an exagerration to say there is at least one church every mile along every major road in Nashville, and often two or three. And while some of these churches are small, most of them have impressive buildings that would dwarf the majority of churches back in Australia. From my perspective this is another positive aspect to Nashville, but we were talking to someone else who found it a bit of a negative point – if you’re not a church-goer then the fact that almost everyone here does go would be a bit intimidating I’d imagine. It makes you realise just how different the religious landscape is back in Australia, and makes the point of this post from Hamo even more vivid – we in Australia shouldn’t blindly follow American or any other models of doing church, since the religious millieu of the community is vastly different.

We’ve only been here a few days but I’ve really enjoyed Nashville. It’s a pretty city, a friendly city, with a really great atmosphere – a great mix of music and religion and good ole southern hospitality. In our case it’s been extra special because we’ve been visiting some wonderful people here, which all four of us have really valued. I can’t wait to get back to Nashville again. 

Getting late here but I haven’t updated in a couple of days so time for a quick recap.

Monday morning I got up nice and early, bundled the boys in the car and drove halfway across Tennessee to Memphis, birthplace of the blues and home of The King – Elvis Presley. Was a smooth 3 hour drive through some beautiful countryside before we arrived at Graceland. And Graceland itself was well worth the effort, not only to see the 70s style home decorating, and Elvis’ cars and planes and gold records etc, but to really step back into history and connect with a man whose legacy is still with us today.  Graceland, and the city of Memphis, would have to be the rock ‘n roll Mecca. It’s a shame Memphis was such a drive because there was so much more I wanted to see there – Beale St, Sun Studios, the Gibson factory – but after a drive through the city along the edge of the Mississippi, we had to head back East to Nashville, along the aptly titled “Music Highway” – between these two cities there is an awful lot of music history.

Today I created my own piece of Nashville related music history (well sort of) – I visited a couple of guitar shops and picked up that Fender VG stratocaster I’ve been wanting. The first shop didn’t have any but when I walked into the second there it was hanging on the wall, in the exact colour I wanted – Suburst with maple neck. Actually it’s the same colour as the strat in the domino picture I’ve had in my blog banner all these years which is kinda cool. So far I’m quite impressed. The essential strat tone is great, and the simulations seem very good. The alternate tunings see to track flawlessly, and there’s virtually no noise from any of the guitar sims, even the acoustic ones. Before now all the acoustic simulators I’ve ever tried have had a terrible hiss. I also grabbed a Roland Micro Cube amp so I can plug in and play for the rest of this trip, and as a useful practice amp for back home. Wish I had the money and the luggage space to pick up some more guitars – they had a huge range of beautiful Fenders, Gibsons and others at pretty good prices – but until the next trip this one versatile guitar will have to suffice. Oh, I also visited the Gibson store on Sunday after lunch – never seen such a fantastic range of Gibsons in my life, including some quite unusual models. Might try and get back there tomorrow for another look, since we’ll be over that way again.

Anyway everyone else is snoozing so I’d better log off. If it get time over the next couple of days I’ll post some more pictures (including Graceland), and my overall (very positive) impressions of Nashville and more updates on what we’ve been up to.

A little bit of down time this morning before we head off for lunch at the Rainforest Cafe  and a walk through the big shopping mall here in Nashville (which includes the Gibson store!) so I thought I’d upload a few of our photos from our time in the UK…

(1) Owen & Luke by the Thames

(2) The Tower of London

(3) A Tower Guard

(4) Return of the Jedi

(5) Parliament Square – Big Ben – Looks like rain?

(6) Picadilly Circus with Uncle Matt

(7) On Blackpool beach

Today was perhaps the best of our trip thus far. We drove over to our friends’ house in Nashville, where we spent a pleasant morning and had lunch. It was great to see how quickly our kids bonded with their two, who are of very similar ages.

After lunch we drove into the city and had a look around the centre of Nashville. Even early on a Saturday afternoon this city has a great atmosphere. Live country music being played in a number of venues along the street, buskers on the street, horse drawn carriages everywhere. We checked out a guitar shop (made me wish I was able to bring home 3 or 4 – the prices and range here are awesome), had some ice-cream, and then went down to the Cumberland river. After that we took a drive through “Music row” which is the epicentre of the music industry here, where big record labels, famous studios and tons of other related businesses all mingle in the setting of a couple of leafy suburban streets. Although there’s a few large office buildings, most of these studios and business are in old houses and even a church. If there’s one thing you can say about Nashville it’s that the place has character. The city centre has a great atmosphere, and the green, spacious suburbs have the feel of a big country town. It’s terrific.

We finished the day with a visit to a local park, where the kids enjoyed playing in the playground. By the end of it Owen had a following of about 6 kids leading them in some sort of time travel game.

So as I said before, this was one of the best days of our trip so far – in part because we are in a great city, but mostly because we spent it in the company of good friends. Looks like this is going to be a really nice week here in Tennessee.